real estate market

Oklahoma’s credit unions face challenges that sound pretty familiar throughout the industry: compliance burdens, low investment returns, corporate assessments and a lackluster economy. But thankfully for credit unions in the Sooner State, the highs and lows of the real estate market experienced in other states isn’t part of that mix.

Credit unions smashed through a previous record in the first-quarter 2012 when they originated 8% of all mortgages made in the U.S. Now there are signs that their success represents more of a sustainable trend than a mere statistical anomaly.

In 1949, seven employees at the National Advisory Council for Aeronautics formed a credit union. The agency was destined to become the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 1958, on the cusp of a time period when the space race with the Soviet Union was to end with a man...

At the close of 2011’s second quarter, a handful of credit unions located in the sand states, where a teetering economy has made it most difficult for financial institutions to thrive, shared hopeful bits of news: net worth ratio improvements, net income increases, loan loss reductions and operating expense cutbacks.